


parental guidance recommended

by badacts



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Kid Fic, Kid!Kevin, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-05-01 00:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 18,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14508768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: Andrew and Neil are domesticated - mostly - and Kevin is their child: a series.





	1. 17 years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [broship_addict](https://archiveofourown.org/users/broship_addict/gifts).



> This is not even vaguely in chronological order, fyi.
> 
> Cross-posted from tumblr.

The phone wakes Neil, and the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is the 2:18 glowing on the alarm clock.

“Minyard,” Andrew answers. His voice is rough with sleep but he sounds awake enough. He listens for a few beats and then says, “Where are you?”

He pushes up out of the bed, and the movement on the mattress jolts both the cats and Neil into proper wakefulness. Neil rolls over and gets blinded by the lamp, shoving his head into the mattress with a curse. He can hear Andrew opening a drawer and then the sounds of him dressing.

“Fifteen minutes,” Andrew says, and then to Neil, “That was Kevin.”

That gets Neil’s head up pretty quick. “What?”

“He’s on Castle Street at someone’s party. Too drunk to drive,” Andrew says, throwing on his jacket and stuffing his feet into his shoes.

“ _What_?”

“Keep up,” Andrew replies. “Kevin, illegal drinking, needs to be picked up.”

“Wasn’t he meant to be studying with Jean and Jeremy?” Neil asks. He’s already sliding down back onto the bed to lie flat, because it looks like Andrew has this covered. He’ll be pissed off later, when it’s actually morning.

“Bad influences,” Andrew replies, mostly to himself. It’s fair, because Kevin is probably the most well behaved kid on the planet. “I’m going.”

“Mm,” Neil replies into the pillow. “If you drive fast enough you might get there before he starts to panic about calling.”

 

* * *

 

The cops beat Andrew there.

All the lights are on inside the house, and the yard is lit up with flashing red and blue. Kids are filing out of the gate when Andrew parks someone in and climbs out of the Maserati, pushing his way up towards the house.

He has his cell phone in his hand to call Kevin – he’ll track the GPS somehow if he has to – but he ends up not needing to. There’s a familiar spiky head towering over the rest off to the far side of the crowd, with a much more familiar dark head beside him. 

“Hey, Minyard,” Boyd says peaceably. His street uniform looks more natural on him than what he’s always stuffed into when Andrew sees him in court. “I think this one is yours.”

“Dad!” Kevin says, wide-eyed. He’s a little pale, like Neil’s predictions about his anxiety are true. He’s also listing badly sideways. “I can’t find Jean, have you seen him?”

“I’ve been here two minutes,” Andrew replies, unimpressed. “If he has any sense, he would have made a run for it by now.”

“Noooo,” Kevin says. “They wouldn’t leave without me.”

His misgivings about Kevin’s partners in crime aside, Andrew has to concede the point. Jeremy is their ringleader and the sole reason two introverts like Jean and Kevin would come to a house party, but he’s the kind of teenage boy who would never leave a friend behind.

“Kevin, hey, I found him-” Speak of the devil. Jeremy stops when he sees Andrew and squeaks, “Mister Minyard!”

“Jeremy,” Andrew replies flatly. The kid has a much drunker Jean hanging off his shoulder like a wilting beanpole. 

Andrew turns to Boyd and gives him a speaking look. Boyd smiles and waves him off. “Take ‘em away.”

Andrew looks back at the three boys. “You have a minute to get in the car or I’m leaving you here.”

Drunkenness aside, they’re in the Maserati pretty quickly. Jeremy practically carries Jean. Kevin tries to help, but it doesn’t look like he’s doing anything other than hindering.

All three of them crush together in the back. Andrew looks at the trio of pale faces squashed up in his rear view mirror and internally sighs.

“Where am I dropping you two off?” he asks quietly.

“Jeremy’s!” Kevin and Jean both say at the same time as Jeremy says, “My place!”

Andrew has his suspicions about Jean’s living situation, but he won’t push. He just starts the car and drives towards Jeremy’s house, a sweet-looking suburban place complete with a white picket fence. It’s a silent trip.

When he pulls up, Jeremy pours Jean out onto the sidewalk and then follows. He puts his head back into the car with a wincing expression. “Thanks, Mister Minyard.”

“Say hello to your mother from me,” Andrew replies. The light in the front window of the Knox house has just flicked on.

He and Neil decided that grounding Kevin wasn’t the kind of ‘parenting’ they were interested in doing, but Jeremy’s parents don’t think the same.

The wince gets worse. “Sure thing.”

Jeremy closes the door, leaving Kevin alone in the backseat as Andrew does a U-turn and starts back towards the apartment building. Whenever he casts a glance at Kevin in the mirror, he’s flopped back in his seat, eyes closed.

“Don’t puke in the car,” Andrew warns him.

“Are you angry with me?” Kevin asks in a very small voice.

Andrew considers this. On one hand, he would prefer to be in his bed asleep at this point rather than driving across the city. On the other, it’s a Saturday, and he prefers the idea of Kevin calling them over him dying in a crash trying to make his own way home.

“No,” he says, but then adds, honestly, “Neil might be, though.”

 

* * *

 

Of course, once Andrew is gone and the apartment is quiet again, Neil can’t sleep.

He sighs and gets out of bed, going out to the kitchen. He passes by Kevin’s bedroom on the way, which is as neat as usual with its bookshelf of the history texts he loves and the collection of Exy trophies on the windowsill. 

Stopping to lean in the doorway, Neil gives himself a moment to think of the days when Kevin was five and wouldn’t go anywhere without Andrew, or eight and surgically attached to his new, tiny Exy racquet, or ten and spouting facts about Ancient Egypt at every opportunity. Kids are difficult, but they’re a fuck of a lot more straightforward than teenagers.

It would be pretty judgemental of him to be upset over Kevin, a top athlete and honours student, going to a party without telling them. Illegal drinking doesn’t even make the top one hundred things Neil did as a teenager, either illegal or just plain stupid. 

On the other hand, blood aside, Kevin’s their kid. Neil is angry because he’s a little bit scared by this sudden diversion into rebellion. He’d just started to think that Kevin didn’t have it in him to do things like go to parties and lie about where he was at night.

He wishes he and Andrew could ground Kevin. He would just ground him until he was eighteen. Problem solved.

Maybe.

Neil goes down to the kitchen and makes himself a cup of tea, sitting at the table to drink it. He’s only halfway through when the front door opens, admitting one light pair of feet and one much heavier pair.

Andrew comes in first, flicking Neil a calm look before heading past towards the bedroom. Kevin follows and, somewhat reluctantly, steps into the kitchen to waver in the doorway.

“You should drink some water,” Neil recommends.

If anything, Kevin looks more frightened than he already had. “Why?”

Despite himself, Neil feels a touch of amusement at that. “Your head might hurt a little less tomorrow if you do.”

“Are you angry?” Kevin rushes out, and then begins to examine the floor at his feet very carefully rather than look at Neil.

“A little bit,” Neil tells him honestly. “But I’m glad you called. Though, to be clear, I don’t want you drinking. Or going to parties, even if Jeremy thinks it’s a great idea.”

“I won’t!” Kevin says. “Again. I’m sorry. It wasn’t even that fun, I don’t-”

“Kevin,” Neil interrupts. “Go to bed, huh?”

This derails Kevin’s apology rant. He looks at Neil hard for a moment – or he might just be squinting through the alcohol haze – before nodding. “Yeah, okay.”

He turns away, takes a step, and then turns back. “Thanks.”

“Thank Andrew. He’s the one who picked you up,” Neil replies, “I would have made you get a taxi.”

“Whatever,” Kevin replies, because he’s seventeen. “You told me once that you’d rather I called you if I was, uh, drinking, so…”

“Yeah,” Neil agrees. He did say that, and he’s glad Kevin remembered it. 

“I did thank him,” Kevin says quickly. “Okay, good night.”

He smacks his shoulder lightly against the doorframe on the way out into the hall, and Neil has to smother a laugh in his mug.

By the time Neil makes it back to their bedroom, Andrew is back under the covers but still awake, his eyes gleaming in the light from the hall. Neil closes the door and undresses in the dark before slipping in beside him.

There’s nothing to say. Kevin as a kid was straightforward, but this was still a hell of a lot easier than the first time he got sick in their care as a toddler. At least this time Kevin can clean up his own vomit if it comes to that.

Neil leans across the mattress and unerringly finds Andrew’s mouth, pressing a quick kiss there. 


	2. 5 years

“You didn’t think this through,” Neil tells Andrew.

Andrew looks calm because he’s always calm, but there’s a thread of quiet stress carved in around his mouth. Neil would feel sympathetic, but Andrew brought this on himself.

‘This’ is the quietly crying five-year-old clinging to Andrew’s legs like a limpet. Kevin can’t be described as stoic in any sense of the word, but he’s usually a pretty tough kid. That’s probably the only reason he’s snuffling into Andrew’s jeans instead of howling right now.

Andrew gives Neil a mild look before crouching down. Kevin is forced to let go of his death grip, but he immediately takes up another on Andrew’s shirt. His little scrunched-up miserable face does send a little pang through Neil’s chest.

When they took Kevin in, it was with the understanding that Neil, who travelled for work as pro Exy player, would continue to do so because his salary was high, and that Andrew would mostly work from home until Kevin was old enough for kindergarten. That’s worked out well, except that Kevin is basically surgically attached to Andrew and Neil  _warned_  him it was going to come to this.

“Do you want to go to school?” Andrew asks Kevin, straightforward as ever.

Kevin, who has had his schoolbag packed for at least two weeks and who could barely get to sleep last night from excitement, rubs his eye with a fist and says, clearly, “Yes.”

“Then why are you so upset?” Andrew asks.

“I don’t want to go without you,” Kevin replies, equally straightforward. His other hand is still white-knuckled in the front of Andrew’s shirt.

“I can stay for a while, but not all day.”

“Why not?” Kevin’s lower lip has stopped trembling but at that it starts again.

“Because I already went to school,” Andrew replies, very reasonably. Somehow Neil doesn’t laugh.

“You don’t want to go to school?” Kevin asks tremulously.

Andrew looks at their surroundings, made of tiny brightly-coloured furniture and clumsy drawings and other small children-related things. He opens his mouth, probably to tell Kevin the truth, and Neil jumps in.

“He would love to stay, but he has work, remember?” he says. Andrew had mostly hated school when he wasn’t ambivalent towards it, and Neil has a feeling if he says as much Kevin will throw the tantrum to end all tantrums about how he hates school now too. “I’m sure school will be way more fun.”

“I like work though,” Kevin says, because to him ‘work’ is sitting at Andrew’s desk and drawing pictures while Andrew attempts to actually get work done around him.

“School is definitely more fun,” Amanda – or ‘Miss Amanda’, as she introduced herself to Kevin – cuts in helpfully. She’s been watching this with a half-amused and half-sympathetic expression on her face. “Why don’t I show you around, Kevin? Your dads can come too.”

Kevin looks at her seriously, and then nods. She offers Kevin her hand and he takes it. Despite the tears and snot on it, Amanda seems unconcerned. Neil should be less impressed by this, but even after a few years of child raising he still sometimes catches himself thinking that kids are kind of disgusting.

Kevin lets go of Andrew as he stands, watching Amanda pointing out what is helpfully labelled The Art Corner in big bubble letters stapled to the wall. Andrew’s shirt is a little stretched out from the force of Kevin’s grip, but he doesn’t bother to smooth it.

Predictably, Kevin is quickly distracted from them by the very capable Amanda and the host of colourful objects around the room. He’s peaceably talking with a pair of small boys when Amanda leaves him and comes back to where Neil and Andrew are hovering silently in the periphery.

She winks. “They usually settle pretty fast once they see what we’ve got on offer. Well done for not joining in on the waterworks though.”

“Is that what usually happens?” Neil asks. He’s not exactly the crying type.

“Some parents make it to the car first I think,” she replies thoughtfully. “If you’ve gotta run, you can probably go ahead now. I’ll call if there are any issues. Otherwise you’re welcome to stay and join in with our program for today. I’m sure there are a few Exy fans in the mix.”

She darts off then, a wave of pleasant floral perfume. She kind of reminds Neil of Renee, actually.

“Should we say goodbye or just make a dash for it?” Neil asks. “Unless you want to stay and help out in The Art Corner, of course.”

Andrew doesn’t bother to respond, instead stepping up to where Kevin is carefully assisting his new friend to make something out of big connecting blocks like the Lego he has at home. “Hey. We’re going to go now, alright?”

“Okay,” Kevin replies absently. “Bye.”

“Bye bud,” Neil says with a wave that doesn’t get any response at all, and then follows Andrew back out to the car.

Andrew doesn’t hesitate before starting the engine, but Neil can’t resist saying, “Sure you don’t need a tissue?”

Andrew tilts his head sideways to give Neil a dull look. “I think I can cope.”


	3. 16 months

Renee and Allison come and visit with their children about six months after Kevin arrives. Kevin and their youngest Isabelle get on like a house on fire, but Leah is seven and apparently ‘too old to play with the babies’.

This, of course, means that Kevin wants her attention even more. He’s like one of the cats, insistent, with his big eyes and the quiet way he trails around after Leah, thumb in his mouth.

“He’s pretty cute,” Allison notes, watching this. Motherhood hasn’t managed to make her any less put together. It’s 2PM on a Sunday afternoon and she looks like she just walked out of a photoshoot.

“All babies are cute,” Neil replies. He agrees, but it’s like puppies and kittens – they’re all cute, until they puke on you, or break stuff, or scream incessantly in the middle of the night for no discernable reason.

Leah has brought a few dolls with her, and Kevin is just as interested in them as he is in Leah herself. He watches from a polite distance as Leah plays with them and ignores him entirely, and then reaches out to stroke one’s hair.

Leah gasps. Allison manages to get out her name in warning before Leah shrieks, “They’re not for babies!”

Kevin, surprised, steps back and falls on the floor on his butt, bumping his head against the wall. He looks surprised for a second before his lip wobbles and he abruptly bursts into tears.

Andrew puts his head out of the kitchen – presumably to check that no one is actually injured – and then withdraws again almost immediately.

“Leah, that was rude,” Allison says, firm and implacable. “What have I told you about sharing?”

Meanwhile, Kevin picks himself up and toddles to Neil on the couch, reaching up to him imploringly while still wailing.

Neil lifts him into his lap – he should have known doing weights was going to come in handy someday – and checks the back of his head for a bump, maybe blood, with the noise he’s making. There’s nothing there.

“Hey,” Neil says calmly. “You’re okay. Not even a bruise.”

Looking after kids –  _parenting_ , he supposes – was never something he planned to do, and he’s pretty far from a natural at it. It’s not like he grew up observing good examples of it, for a start. So he’s kind of watched Andrew’s unconventional but successful techniques and learned as he’s gone along, and he’s getting there.

Kevin shoves his face into Neil’s chest, hiccupping but already calming. Neil cups the back of his head with one hand and rubs his back with the other, muttering nonsense as he relaxes. Like always, the aftermath of the absolute cataclysm of toddler emotion makes Kevin doze off almost immediately, a heavy warm weight.

A hand brushes over his shoulder, and Andrew says, “I’ll put him down.”

Neil looks up and realises Allison has wrestled Leah out of the room, leaving it for them. “Okay.”

Andrew lifts Kevin from Neil’s lap and retreats with him, pudgy arms wrapped around his neck. Neil is examining the wet patch on the front of his shirt when Renee says, “You’re doing well.”

She’s leaning in the doorway, a hand on one hip, with her soft dark eyes and the curve her smile the same as always. “Steep learning curve, right?”

“The steepest,” Neil agrees honestly. Despite her gentle and motherly aura, he’s willing to bet that, once upon a time, Renee thought she was as unlikely to have kids as Neil and Andrew both.

“Worth it, though.”

It’s funny how life works out. Neil says, “Yeah. It is.”


	4. 10 months

Neil gets in earlier than he expected. He’s feeling good - they just won away from home again, keeping their streak going, and he’s excited to be home after a long week away. He’s still quiet when he comes in the front door, seeing as it’s nap time, which means it’s also the only time that Andrew ever reliably gets any work done. 

That turns out to be a waste of time, because the first thing he hears is the sound of crying.  _Loud_  crying.

He goes to the kitchen where the noise is emanating from, and finds Andrew with a flushed and bawling Kevin on his hip, clad only in a diaper. Two pairs of eyes instantly fix on him, one set teary green and the other a calm hazel.

Kevin’s garbled, “Dadada _dadada_ ,” merges back into shrieking, and he reaches both arms out to Neil. Neil holds his own out – it’s instinctive, at this point – and Andrew passes Kevin over to him with an unusual level of enthusiasm.

“He’s sick,” Andrew says. “I’m going to shower.”

He turns on his heel and leaves immediately. 

Neil, who still has his duffel bag hanging over his shoulder, breathes out slowly. Then he manoeuvres his way through into the living room and onto the couch.

Kevin is a hot and squalling weight against his chest, clinging so tight about Neil’s neck that he can barely breathe. Also, there’s a court shoe digging into his lower back. Neil tucks his nose against Kevin’s hair, which smells a lot more like vomit than normal, and rocks him a little.

He’s still bawling when Andrew reappears, though maybe a little more quietly. Andrew is wearing an entirely new outfit, his gold hair still damp from the shower. He has dark circles carved into his face and his jaw looks a little tight.

“How long has he been like this?” Neil asks, loud enough to be heard over Kevin.

“Since 3AM,” Andrew replies. “I’m going to go to the drugstore.”

He pauses, watching Neil expectantly. Neil considers and then tells him, “I don’t need anything. Maybe some Gatorade. Or maybe some earplugs.”

“I put on a load of washing,” Andrew says, and then leaves again. Neil hears the jingle of keys, rustling as Andrew shrugs into his jacket, and then the soft clicks of the door opening and then closing.

Kevin’s grip has loosened a little now. Neil rubs his back and says, “Alright, buddy?”

Kevin pauses in crying for a moment, hiccups, and then pukes on Neil’s shirt.

Fortuitously, the last few months have given Neil a sense of humour about bodily fluids that he never really expected to attain. Also, he’s more patient now than he ever, ever would have been without Kevin in his life.

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” he mutters mostly to himself in a soothing tone under the renewed crying, resigning himself to smelling like baby vomit for however long it takes for Andrew to come back. 

It’s a 50-50 shot that Andrew will drive around for a while rather than rush back to the apartment. Parenthood throws him for more of a loop than either of them ever thought it would with his usual unshakeable calm, just like Neil has been calmer about it all than anyone – including himself – would have imagined. Neil doesn’t begrudge him the opportunity to escape for a while, especially considering the amount of sleep he likely didn’t get last night.

Okay, it might be more like a 30-70 chance. Andrew is pretty devoted.

Neil stands, shedding his bag as he does so, and heads into the little utility room. Once he gets there he finds what Andrew means about the washing – there’s an enormous pile of dirty cloths and clothes, mostly child-sized, next to the spinning machine.

“Shit,” Neil mutters, because their nod to child-friendly language is mostly saying cursewords quietly rather than loudly. They’ve found it generally pays not to make unattainable goals, and their key focus is keeping Kevin alive rather than Neil trying to remember that ‘fuck’ isn’t an appropriate word to come out of a toddler’s mouth.

He finds a washcloth and optimistically wipes his shirt off a little. Then he throws a towel over his shoulder and swaps Kevin to that side, in an equally optimistic attempt to protect himself.

“Alright,” he says to Kevin, who scrunches his miserable flushed face into Neil’s neck. He’s crying quieter now, like he’s getting tired, and Neil feels a pinch at how hard he’s clinging. He’s always been a reasonably stoic kid, though soft-hearted – he cries when he has a fall, or when he gets a fright, but temper tantrums are few and far between.

He’s also, thus far, been very healthy. Neil feels another pinch, this one more uncomfortable, over the fact that he’s sick and so unhappy.

Usually Kevin is delighted to see Neil when he comes home from being on the road. He’s toddling more capably now and speaking better and better, though he still babbles in a way that Neil and Andrew can understand well but most normal adults would hear as gibberish. If he’s not in bed he’ll appear at the sound of the opening door and light up when he sees Neil, demanding to be picked up and regaling Neil with a rush of words about completely innocuous topics.

Neil doesn’t have a favourite, so as a form of greeting it’s right up there equal with Andrew’s brisk kisses and dry comments.

“You’re okay,” Neil tells Kevin, taking him back through to the living room. He’s whimpering, but he settles into Neil. He’s exhausted. Neil twists the towel to wrap it around his little body and holds on.

 

* * *

 

By the time Andrew comes back, laden with the reusable shopping bag that lives in the trunk of the car and that Neil had nothing to do with, Kevin is screaming again.

Andrew goes into the kitchen, and then comes through to the living room with a bottle of Gatorade and a medicine bottle. The Gatorade goes onto the coffee table by Neil’s feet, and Andrew pours a dose of the medicine onto a spoon.  
Neil obligingly turns Kevin to give Andrew access to his mouth. Crying aside, Kevin takes the spoon easily, though he shrieks and pats at his mouth because of the taste. That done, Andrew passes the Gatorade to Neil.

“I don’t suppose you did pick up some earplugs,” Neil asks dryly, and then, “It’s okay, I’ve got him.”

Andrew was about to pick Kevin up from Neil, but he pauses at that, raising an eyebrow.

“Go take a nap if you want,” Neil tells him. 

Andrew shakes his head, but there’s a certain looseness to his body when he drops onto the couch beside Neil that implies relaxation. Or maybe exhaustion. Neil certainly feels more relaxed now they’re together again, and he only spent forty minutes alone with Kevin, not hours and hours.

“You could have called,” Neil prods gently. “Family leave.”

“You were coming back anyway,” Andrew replies. His eyes are closed. 

“Still,” Neil says. 

Andrew hushes him. Neil will charitably say it’s because Kevin is quieting again, rather than just because Andrew wants him to stop talking. After a little while, Andrew tilts sideways, putting his head on the arm of the couch and tucking his feet under Neil’s thigh.

Kevin’s whimpering is fading to soft snores. He feels a little less overheated, like his temperature might be going down. Neil knows he needs fluids, but he’s reluctant to disturb him just yet. He’s also reluctant to disturb Andrew, who is breathing deeper and slower now, one arm curled over his face.

Neil holds Kevin close, closes his eyes for a moment, and doesn’t sleep.  _Someone_  needs to be awake right now, and it feels right that it’s him.


	5. 10 years

If Andrew ever wondered, back when he was a teenager, where he would end up in his thirties, it wouldn’t have been doing a school run. At all, never mind with his kid.

Life is unpredictable, it turns out.

On Thursdays he picks Kevin up from school after work and drops him at the local outdoor Exy court for practice. Neil will pick him up later on the way back from his own afternoon gym session with his teammates, which gives Andrew an hour or so to do nothing before he has to start dinner.

He’s been in for maybe twenty minutes watching something mindless on HGTV about redecorating kitchens when the buzzer goes off. Andrew isn’t expecting anyone and debates ignoring it for a moment, but then gets it anyway.

“Hi, Mister Minyard,” Jason, the doorman, says from the other end. “I’ve got a Tetsuji Moriyama here to see you?”

Well. That’s interesting.

“Send him up,” Andrew says, and hangs up.

A few minutes later, there’s a single knock at the door. Andrew pulls it open to get his first look at the man on the other side.

He’s not much to look at. Not that old – mid-fifties to Andrew’s thirty-five – but walks with a cane. Taller than Andrew, but not exactly tall. Quiet-faced and with the bearing of someone used to being respected. Used to power.

He doesn’t look like a comedian, but Andrew can’t exactly talk on that front either.

“Mister Minyard,” Tetsuji says. “I was hoping to speak with you.”

Andrew looks at him for a moment longer, and then turns away. He leaves the door open behind him and hears it click closed as Tetsuji follows him inside.

They go into the kitchen, where Andrew takes a seat at the table. Tetsuji does the same after a moment. They end up on opposing sides, face to face.

“I presume, considering your…partner’s profession, you know who I am,” Tetsuji says.

“I know who you are,” Andrew replies.

There’s another pause before Tetsuji says, “I’m here in regards to Kevin.”

Andrew tilts his head in an invitation to go on. Tetsuji interlocks his fingers on the table.

“I’m sure you know that Kayleigh originally intended for Kevin’s guardianship to be passed to me in the event of her death. However, her close relationship with Mister Josten meant he took Kevin in. I think that was for the best, considering,” Tetsuji says. “I’ve begun to hear of Kevin’s talent for Exy already. I wanted to raise a proposition. As you may know, my nephew Riko is Kevin’s age, and also exceptionally talented. I thought it might be for the best for Kevin to be fostered alongside Riko so that the two of them can train together.”

Andrew says, “You believe in starting them early, then.”

“It’s been proven that training under the correct tutelage produces higher quality athletes when begun at a young age.”

“Kevin is ten years old.”

“Which should prove my point, in the long run.”

“You are a college coach. I struggle to understand what you want with a child.”

“And I understand your reticence, considering your own childhood.”

Tetsuji has done his research, then. All he probably had to do was read a newspaper and make an educated guess, but he doesn’t seem the kind of man to leave it at that. Andrew wonders how much cash it took to buy Tetsuji the whole sordid story.

“Kevin would have the best education available, while receiving the kind of training that will see him reaching the top of the sport. It’s an opportunity many players his age and older would kill for. And more, it’s his birth right.”

“You and I come from very different worlds,” Andrew observes calmly. His own birth right would have seen him dead and buried by now, and he might have believed in the concept once upon a time. 

He doesn’t, not anymore.

Tetsuji inclines his chin in agreement. “I’m sure that won’t stop you from making the right decision with regards to Kevin, however.”

“No,” Andrew agrees. “Neil doesn’t like you very much. Did you know that?”

“He is forthright when it comes to sharing his opinions. I hope our personal differences in opinion don’t influence you from making the correct decision, either.”

Andrew hums. “‘Personal differences in opinion.’ I wasn’t aware we were calling it that now.”

Tetsuji’s silence is a prompt for Andrew to explain.

“Neil grew up amongst criminals. He doesn’t want the same for Kevin,” Andrew says. “Neither do I.”

Andrew grew up with criminals, too. There’s not much difference between those who only do violence to the people closest to them and those who do violence on a grander scale. And Tetsuji might belong to a lesser branch, but he is by no means untainted.

Tetsuji doesn’t speak, though there has been a shift in his expression. Re-evaluating, Andrew thinks.

Andrew says, “When I said I knew who you were, did you think I was exaggerating?”

“I was of the understanding that Neil is generally less outspoken when it comes to secrets regarding his father’s business.”

“He didn’t need to tell me anything. I am more than capable of doing my own research.”

“You are a lawyer.”

“And your family has paid off a lot of lawyers.” 

Andrew isn’t silver-tongued like Neil, but he knows how to get his point across. 

Tetsuji blinks slowly. “I note you haven’t used this information that you have apparently gathered.”

Contrary to popular belief, Andrew didn’t become a DA because he believes in goodness and light and what the fuck ever else. He specifically studied as a  _fuck you_  to everyone who ever touched him with the knowledge that they would never, ever face any consequences. 

Andrew shrugs one shoulder, casual. “No one has given me a good reason to.”

_Go ahead. Give me a reason to._

Tetsuji didn’t come here to take a ‘no’ for an answer. Maybe he thought Andrew would be a softer target than Neil. 

Maybe he should have done more research himself.

“Let me be clear,” Andrew says, because Neil could talk in circles all day but that isn’t his style. “Kevin stays with us. If you want to recruit him for your team, you can do it when he’s in high school, like a normal teenager.”

Kevin has wanted to go to USC to play for the Trojans since he was seven, but Tetsuji doesn’t need to know that.

“He isn’t a normal teenager.” Oh, yes, his ‘blood rite’.

“Being good at a sport doesn’t make anyone special.” Maybe that’s hypocritical from someone who got a degree out of standing in a goal for five years, but Andrew has never claimed to be normal, either.

“I hope you’ll reconsider,” Tetsuji says after a moment, voice level.

“If you think there is any chance of that, you have’t been listening,” Andrew replies. “Neil will arrive in ten minutes. If I were you, I would insure he doesn’t see you here.”

Tetsuji stands, and for a moment Andrew stays in place, letting the other man have the advantage of height. He waits to feel intimidated but, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t come. Then he stands too, walking Tetsuji to the door.

“Thank you for your time,” Tetsuji says with a nod. Andrew looks at him for another moment, eye to eye, and then closes the door on him.

True to Andrew’s expectations, Neil and Kevin come in ten minutes later, their voices a quiet jumble as they move through the house. 

“Hey,” Kevin chirps as he appears in the kitchen and makes a beeline for the pantry to look for a snack. Andrew, who is slicing vegetables on the bench, doesn’t even bother to look. Kevin has no sweet tooth to speak of so generally snacks on crackers and cheese, if not fruit. He will eat crisps by the bag, though.

“Hi,” Andrew replies. 

“Hey,” Neil says. “Kevin, shower. You stink.”

“Do not,” Kevin replies through a mouthful of food, though he’s only saying it for the sake of argument. “Why don’t  _you_  shower?”

“Because I already did,” Neil replies. “You’ve got…how long?”

That’s aimed at Andrew, who says, “Twenty minutes.”

“Noooo,” Kevin whines, and then there’s a clatter as he vacates the room. Their ‘no one who smells like a gym locker room gets fed’ rule is going to work even better on him when he’s a teenager.

“Hey,” Neil says again, once Kevin has left the kitchen. He appears at Andrew’s side. “Let me help?”

“Put a pot of water on,” Andrew tells him, but lets Neil kiss him firm and warm on the mouth before prodding him into action.

Another thing he couldn’t have predicted back in the bad old days, besides the school runs – Neil fucking Josten.

“Hey.” Third time is the charm, apparently. Andrew meets Neil’s gaze head on, finding it still as ever. “You’re alright?”

“Yes,” Andrew replies. “Tetsuji Moriyama stopped by.”

There’s a shift in Neil, from familiar to something less so. Something sharp, broken glass and winter chill. “What did he want?”

“Kevin,” Andrew says, and it’s immediately clear that Neil isn’t surprised by that. “I told him no.”

“He won’t necessarily take no for an answer.”

“You know what happens when people don’t listen to me saying no,” Andrew replies, keeping hold of his eyes, voice steady like stone. 

Neil smiles. It’s not a particularly nice one, no warmth in it, but Andrew likes it anyway. He likes it better when Neil presses it to Andrew’s mouth and then lets it shift into a kiss, firm and hot, then hotter.

“Yeah,” Neil says eventually, breath branding Andrew’s jaw. “I do.”


	6. 3 years

Aaron Minyard is used to disasters, so he figures babysitting a toddler can’t be that hard.

The irony of his brother having a child before him doesn’t escape him. He and Katelyn decided to wait until their training was mostly finished so that they had both time and money, and Aaron doesn’t regret that. It doesn’t negate the strangeness of Andrew as a father, though.

The point is, he and Katelyn are planning on having children, and they like children, so looking after a three-year-old shouldn’t be that difficult. Not even when the three-year-old in question belongs to Aaron’s brother, the least likely parent in the world, and  _Neil fucking Josten_.

Neil is, of course, the one to drop Kevin off at Aaron and Katelyn’s house, along with a large array of things. He looks at Aaron looking at all of the…kid stuff, and says, “Don’t worry. That’s normal.”

“Alright,” Aaron says, because he’s trying a new thing where he’s agreeable when it comes to Neil. It was Katelyn’s suggestion, and if he’s honest he’s only stuck with it thus far because of the expression on Neil’s face when Aaron agrees with everything he says.

“He’s had dinner, and I guess I don’t have to give you the usual spiel about poison control that we give our sitters,” Neil says, after a moment of staring at Aaron like he’s grown another head, “But if anything goes wrong, just call us. We’ll both have our phones on.”

“Yeah,” Aaron says, and then receives an armful of sleep-warm and somewhat grumpy-looking Kevin. 

“He’s going to cry when I leave,” Neil says helpfully. “A lot. But he’ll stop eventually. Then he’ll want to sleep, so that will be your evening sorted.”

“Great,” Aaron says. “Anything else?”

“We’ll be back around ten,” Neil says. “Call me if there’s any problems.”

“You said that already.”

“Just making sure you got it.” Neil steps almost uncomfortably close to Aaron and strokes Kevin’s head. “See you in a bit, buddy. Be good.”

Kevin huffs at that and presses his slightly sticky face into Aaron’s neck. Aaron has to look away from Neil’s softened expression – weird, weird, weird – and mutters an answering farewell when Neil leaves at last.

He pushes the door closed with his foot, and then it’s just him and a toddler. Katelyn will be home in a half-hour, but that’s fine.

“Alright,” Aaron says, because he’s worked with little kids, and he _likes_  them, but that’s nothing like having sole charge of one. He leaves most of Kevin’s stuff in the hallway and heads to the lounge, sitting on the couch.

Kevin wakes up a little at that, looking at Aaron and then looking around the room like he’s searching for something. His lip wobbles. Aaron sighs.

 

* * *

 

“Oh my god,” Katelyn says when she gets in. She’s a little wind-blown, changed out of her scrubs into jeans and a sweater.

Aaron doesn’t have a response, but inwardly he agrees. It’s a good thing they have a house rather than an apartment, but even so their neighbours are probably considering a noise complaint right now.

“Nothing wrong with his lungs,” Katelyn says, stealing Kevin out of Aaron’s arms and balancing him on her hip. “Hey! What’s all this for, huh?”

If anything, that makes Kevin shriek louder. Katelyn bounces him gently, unbothered. “Are you sad your dads left you? Hey, fair enough. I would cry too. That’s okay.”

Her voice is mild, and she rubs Kevin’s back with her free hand. “C’mon, I’ll show you around. You can look at the windows or something.”

She disappears from the room, Kevin’s crying quieting a little with a wall or two between him and Aaron. It’s amazing how primal the sound of it is – Aaron could have sworn it wouldn’t bother him, but he’s more flustered than he ever gets, like there’s some instinct telling him he needs to do something to fix Kevin.

Ten minutes later, the crying gets louder again, and Katelyn reappears in the lounge. “Wow, okay. Why don’t you go back to your uncle, huh? He’s probably already deaf now.”

“Thanks,” Aaron tells her, though he accepts Kevin’s weight straight away. Then he leans close to Katelyn so he can kiss her, just a quick peck. “Why don’t you go have a shower, and we’ll make dinner?”

“Alright,” she replies. “‘We’, huh?”

“The sound of crying helps me cook,” Aaron lies, heading into the kitchen. He’s defrosted some bolognaise he made a while back and froze half of, and he puts a pot of water on the stove to boil for pasta. It’s a little tricky with one hand but not impossible, and Kevin might be loud but he’s not wriggling. Actually, he’s clinging to Aaron, his fists caught up in Aaron’s shirt.

“You’re a real crybaby,” Aaron tells him quietly. “It’s not like they aren’t coming back.” 

It might be wishful thinking, but Aaron swears there’s a momentary lull in Kevin’s crying. Keen to maintain it, he says, “It’s very overdramatic. But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Want daddy,” Kevin whines, the first concrete words he’s said this evening. “Please!”

“You’re very polite,” Aaron observes. “They’re busy, but they’ll be back later. Want to stir the sauce?”

“No,” Kevin says, and shoves his face into Aaron’s neck again. “No, no, no.”

“Alright, alright. I’ll do all the work,” Aaron replies. “They must be feeding you over there. You’re heavy.”

“No,” Kevin repeats.

“Okay. Sure you don’t want to stir?”

Kevin’s head lifts from Aaron’s shoulder, and he stares balefully down at the pot with his big reddened eyes. Eventually he says, “Okay.”

Tomato sauce spatters the stovetop, but at least Kevin isn’t crying anymore. In fact, by the time the pasta is cooked, he’s sagging into Aaron.

Katelyn reappears then, wet haired and fresh faced. She steps up next to Aaron, peering at Kevin’s face, and murmurs, “Oh, all worn out?”

Aaron and Kevin both make mutters of agreement. 

“I set up the pack’n’play,” Katelyn says, because she’s a multi-tasking genius. “Go put him down and I’ll serve this up.”

Aaron adjusts Kevin’s weight and takes him through to the guest room where the bed is ready to go. It’s surprisingly difficult to manoeuvre Kevin down on the mattress – Aaron needs to do weights or something – but he manages to be gentle.

Of course, the second Kevin’s back touches the mattress, his eyes open and he  _shrieks_.

“Jesus fuck, you’re possessed,” Aaron says, but obliges when Kevin reaches up to him. When he’s back in Aaron’s arms he clings, crying miserably. “Okay, alright. Guess I’m stuck with you.”

He rubs at Kevin’s back and takes him back out to the lounge. Katelyn puts her head out of the kitchen and looks at the two of them.

“That didn’t work so well,” she states the patently obvious. Kevin is sniffling instead of all-out bawling now, but his little grip is surprisingly strong. “You want dinner, babe?”

“In a minute,” Aaron replies distractedly, sitting onto the couch with Kevin against his chest. This time he settles in, ear to Aaron’s heart, and it’s…something.

“Here,” Katelyn says after a few minutes, sitting down beside him and putting a fork in his hand. She has an oversized bowl of pasta that she nestles in the gap between her thigh and his, helpfully hemmed in by Kevin’s socked feet. She also flicks the television on a home design program – they got into it doing up the house and never got out of the habit of watching – and pops a penne in her mouth.

“Thanks,” Aaron tells her, taking a forkful for himself. On-screen, a blonde woman holds paint chips to an undercoated wall.

At some point Katelyn takes the bowl away again, and returns with a light blanket that she tucks in around Kevin. When she retakes her spot on the couch she curves into Aaron, rubbing a hand absently over his side. That’s about the last thing Aaron remembers.

He stirs what feels like moments later to the sound of voices too clear to be from the TV. He’s warm and heavy and comfortable.

“His shifts have been all over the place,” Katelyn is saying, her voice low.

Kevin moves in Aaron’s lap, and Aaron startles badly, clutching at him with that sick barely-awake impression of falling even when it’s not him moving. He opens his eyes and finds himself face-to-face with Andrew, who is lifting Kevin off of him, blanket and all.

Aaron sits up and rubs a hand over his face. “What time is it?”

“Ten past ten,” Neil replies from the door, one of Kevin’s bags over his shoulder. His collar is hanging open, tie no doubt ripped off the second he escaped from whatever fancy Exy event they’ve been at tonight.

It’s official – Aaron knows Neil too well. One day he’ll figure out how his life got to this point, but it won’t be today.

“You were right,” Aaron tells him, standing. His lower back twinges because he’s getting old.

“About?”

“The crying.” Aaron doesn’t mention the sleeping part, because they’ve seen the proof of that themselves. “We didn’t have to call poison control though.”

“He was fine,” Katelyn hastens to add. “Loud, but good.”

“Thanks,” Neil tells her, hugging her with one arm in his usual brisk fashion. Andrew is already halfway to the door, which is business as usual. 

The difference is the way his body curves to accommodate Kevin’s weight, cradling him close with Kevin’s head nestled into his collarbone. Even the proud line of his neck is loose, chin tilted down.

Aaron might be getting old, but his brother has got soft.

Once they’re gone, Aaron pops his back, sighing a little. He jerks when Katelyn prods him in the side with her finger, grabbing her hand to stop her. 

“That was nice,” she says, transitioning smoothly from poking to holding his hand. “Right?”

“He’s a good kid,” Aaron replies, which is as close as he’ll get to agreeing. Katelyn recognises that by the shape of her smile.

“You’re good with him,” she says, and leans close to kiss him. It’s just outside the realms of chaste, but not quite enough that it stirs him away from the  _bed bed bed_  his body is chanting. When she pulls back, she’s smiling. “Go sleep. I mean, presuming the nap won’t keep you from sleeping.”

“Hah,” Aaron huffs dryly, kissing her again before he goes.


	7. 10 months

Neil is falling asleep beside Andrew on the couch when he suddenly sits bolt upright and says, “Christmas!”

Andrew doesn’t look up from his book. “I know you said you would swear less now, but I presume that isn’t your idea of an alternative.”

“No,” Neil splutters, pointing at the television that is only on for murmuring background noise. The screen is a mess of coloured lights, fake snow and festive music. “It’s nearly Christmas.”

“Your point?” Andrew enquires. It’s the twentieth of December, so Neil isn’t wrong, but he doesn’t know what that has to do with them.

“Kevin,” Neil says. “We should do something.”

“Kevin is ten months old. What would you suggest we do, exactly?” Andrew points out. Kevin may be pretty advanced for his age, according to the internet – he’s taken his first wobbly steps after a very brief period of crawling, and he has a couple of words, notably ‘Da’ and ‘no’ – but he has no concept of Christmas. 

And frankly, Andrew and Neil only have slightly more of a concept. Andrew doesn’t have many good holiday memories from growing up, and Neil never observed a single one until he went to college. These days, they technically celebrate some kind of bastardised winter holiday, though mostly it’s family, friends, and dubiously festive food.

Last year, Nicky made cupcakes that looked like snowmen and Andrew and Aaron didn’t fight, which is the best they’ve done collectively so far.

“We should get a tree,” Neil says, with a kind of fervour he usually reserves for Exy and, well, things related to Kevin. 

“Fine,” Andrew says, because he knows a lost cause when he sees one.

 

* * *

 

Neil nearly cries when he goes to the mall on December 23rd. At least half of that is because Kevin takes one look at the crowds of people everywhere and shrieks like a tiny demon.

Neil is thankful that he did up the straps holding Kevin in his stroller nice and tight. It means he can pretend to be deaf without worrying about Kevin squirming out onto the floor.

He’s pushing the stroller in front of him and dragging a shopping cart behind him with a fake Christmas tree in it when a woman in her fifties stops him to tell him, “You’re doing great, Dad.”

She doesn’t even look concerned when Neil turns a wild-eyed look on her – apparently that’s normal with parents. She just gives him an encouraging and somewhat pitying smile. He can’t believe he’s at a point in his life where random middle-aged people feel sorry for him instead of crossing the street to stay away from him.

As soon as she goes and takes her shopping cart with her, Neil pulls out his phone and dials Andrew’s number.

“Here,” he tells both of them when Andrew answers, shoving the phone in Kevin’s grasping hands. Kevin pulls the phone closer and squawks into it, and Neil hears Andrew’s calm voice murmur, “Hello, Kevin.”

After that the noise from the stroller is limited to Kevin’s usual babbling and fractured syllables. Neil doesn’t take the phone back until he’s paid for the things in his cart and got out to the parking lot.

“I’m done,” he tells Andrew, tucking the phone between his ear and his shoulder so he can get Kevin free of the stroller and into his carseat. Kevin is tired now, protesting being moved by clinging to Neil while he fiddles with too many straps.

“Congrats,” Andrew says boredly. Neil hangs up on him.

Kevin sleeps the whole way home, and wakes up exceptionally grumpy when they pull in. The only advantage is that Neil can pass him off to Andrew to deal with while he unloads the rest of the car.

He puts the tree up while Kevin is napping. It’s only four feet tall but a pretty dark green, and the tinsel and decorations look surprisingly good. It’s not a bad first attempt.

Also, the quiet amazement on Kevin’s face when he sees the lights go on after he wakes up is worth it.

 

* * *

 

Usually they rotate the place they meet for the winter holidays, but this year everyone is coming to them even though it’s technically Aaron and Katelyn’s turn to host. This is good, mostly because Neil can’t think of anything much worse than air travel with a baby and Andrew at the same time.

Nicky sweeps in wearing a Christmas sweater that even Neil can recognise as ugly, a more soberly dressed Erik in his wake. “Hello, hello! Kevin! Oh my god, he’s even cuter in real life, Neil!”

Kevin, who is used to Andrew and Neil’s moderate presences, looks shell-shocked by this level of enthusiasm. He promptly shuffles behind Andrew’s legs, hand stuffed in his mouth.

Nicky immediately softens, his face helplessly charmed. “Oh, a shy one. I see how it is.”

“He’ll warm up,” Neil reassures as he shakes Erik’s hand in welcome. Predictably as soon as Nicky sits down Kevin is all over him, investigating Nicky’s sweater with quiet curiosity. 

Aaron and Katelyn arrive not long after. They’ve met Kevin before, and he loves Aaron. Neil would like to think it’s a predisposed soft spot towards short blond men who don’t talk much, but he knows that Aaron is good with Kevin in his own right. He tries to not be annoyed by that, because he’s an adult.

No one outside this group would ever think the cousins could be any good with children, so Neil kind of cherishes their private truth. Watching Kevin squash himself between Aaron and Nicky on the couch and accidentally poke Aaron in the jaw with the corner of the book he wants them to read to him – together – is actually pretty great.

Kevin still doesn’t get Christmas, but he wakes when Nicky does at six AM, burbling quietly through the monitor. Neil is awake long enough to feel the mattress move as Andrew gets up for him and then is out again.

The next thing he knows, there’s an insistent patting at his face with a small, sticky hand. This is familiar enough by now that Neil doesn’t startle, muttering a greeting to Kevin without opening his eyes.

“Fuck that’s cute,” Nicky says from the doorway, which does get Neil the rest of the awake pretty quickly.

“Language,” Katelyn says as she passes down the hall, voice stern.

Nicky winces. “Whoops. Hey, we’re going to do presents and then Andrew’s going to make food, he says you need to get your ass up.”

“Uh huh,” Neil replies, hoisting Kevin onto the mattress before he falls trying to climb up himself. It’s a bad habit – he and Andrew both agreed it was better that Kevin didn’t try to get into bed with them in the middle of the night, for obvious reasons – but it’s kind of hard not to sometimes. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“There’s coffee,” Nicky says, and then leaves them to it. 

Kevin is content to huddle into Neil’s side now he’s awake, sucking on his fingers again. Neil wraps him in blankets while he gets up and pulls on a t-shirt and sweatpants, and then hoists him onto his hip to take him out to the living room.

The number of presents has multiplied significantly since yesterday. They always get gifts for one another at the winter holidays, and it’s not even the first time they’ve done the whole ‘Christmas Morning’ thing, but usually that’s Andrew and Neil going along with the others, not them instigating it in their own home.

It’s weird, but nice. Neil sits on the couch by Andrew and takes the coffee offered to him, watching as Nicky introduces Kevin to the concept of unwrapping gifts.

It’s objectively pretty funny. Kevin is far more enamoured with the wrapping paper than he is with the gifts themselves, making a complete mess of the carpet as he basically rolls around in it. He opens all of them, meaning the adults have to do a confused handing over of gifts with no labels to their intended recipients once he discards them. Neil catches Katelyn taking pictures and fixes it in his mind to get them from her later.

Neil gets a small cactus from Katelyn and Aaron, and a large flat pot from Nicky and Erik, both of which are meant for his collection of pot plants and terrariums about the house. Andrew gives him a bunch of photos of Kevin from the last four months in defiance of their usual practice of not getting each other anything, which is fine because Neil got him a framed picture of Kevin crying on Santa’s lap from their ill-fated shopping trip and a new sweater. It’s a very dark green, and soft to the touch.

Eventually Kevin tires of wreaking havoc, bringing his two new toy cars to the couch and attempting to crawl up between them. Andrew hoists him up and wedges him in, taking the cars to examine them when Kevin passes them to him. He looks relaxed like this in a way most people wouldn’t assume possible, surrounded by his family and wearing a sweater that looks black but isn’t.

Katelyn takes a few more pictures. Neil is definitely going to need those, too.


	8. 8 months

When it comes to dealing with death and its fallout, Andrew and Neil are far better adapted than most. 

This isn’t like anything else though. Not even close.

When Kayleigh asked Neil to be Kevin’s guardian if anything happened to her, she’d been clever about it. She waited until he’d spent enough time with Kevin for it to be more of a question of whether he was willing to take on Kevin, his friend’s child, instead of a child he had never met when he knew nothing about children.

He and Andrew had talked it over carefully, but it was never anything more than hypothetical. Kayleigh was young, fit and healthy, barely older than Neil and vivaciously full of life. The issue of guardianship was just a matter of loose ends, and making sure that Kevin would always be safe.

 _Was_  is the operative word.

The first day is the hardest. They don’t have any of Kevin’s things. Kevin won’t stop crying, frightened in an unfamiliar place without his mother. Neil is shell-shocked, reeling with his new reality - Kayleigh, dead. Her child, in every way her male miniature, here with them for good.

Without Andrew he would be lost. He’s always been better with kids, a natural where Neil fumbles. He stays with Kevin while Neil drives to Kayleigh’s apartment and tries to figure out what Kevin needs. He puts Kevin down for the night. He also gets up with Neil when Kevin wakes, blinking sleep away, despite the fact that Neil was awake anyway.

It’s his inconsolable crying that makes Neil’s hands shake. Not the fact that he’s committed to a tiny human being now until that human hits eighteen at least, but the fact that he can’t explain anything to this defenceless baby who is just confused and afraid and yet too young to grieve.

Neil doesn’t wear uncertainty well. He’s gotten unused to feeling like this. More fool him - he should have learned by now that when he gets complacent, life has a way of correcting him. 

Andrew, who doesn’t even seem to know the meaning of the word ‘uncertain’, steps in just like he always does.

For the first week, Neil keeps trying to work as well, in part because he knows Kayleigh would never have forgiven him for getting slack over her. It doesn’t work not because of Neil’s mindset - he’s a master of compartmentalisation - but because he’s sleeping maybe two hours a night between Kevin’s late-night crying jaunts and his own insomnia.

His head coach pulls him aside on the fourth day. “Josten, I mean this is in the nicest possible way, but you’re banned from this court until the lead-up to the Seattle game.”

“That’s at least two weeks,” Neil replies. It’s meant to be an exclamation, but he honestly doesn’t have the energy for it.

“I’m aware of that.” Steinham crosses his arms. “I have a vested interest in making sure my top scorer can throw in a straight line for that game.”

“There’s another game before that.”

“If we can’t beat the Panthers with you on the bench you should probably get your agent to find you a better team,” Steinham says. “Josten. Neil. I remember what having a baby is like, and that was without…look. Just take the time and run with it. Your partner will be grateful.”

Neil opens his mouth for another robotic reply, then closes it, nods, and leaves.

He probably shouldn’t be on the road, because when he pulls into his space in their parking lot he has no memory of the trip at all. He even takes the elevator up to their floor.

The first thing he notices when he walks inside the apartment is how quiet it is. There’s a half-unpacked grocery bag on the kitchen bench, and a cupboard hanging open. Andrew’s phone is lying beside it. His wallet and keys aren’t in their usual place.

The absence of crying is more than startling - it’s actually frightening. Or maybe Neil’s bar is just low right now. 

Neil goes for the spare bedroom first, where Kevin’s crib is set up. He can’t quite explain why his heart is in his throat. The first sight of Kevin sprawled on his back with his tiny fists curled up isn’t enough to soothe him - he leans closer and watches the sleep-slow bob of his chest until he can breathe a bit easier himself.

The baby is fine. Neil closes the door soundlessly behind him and goes to the balcony, which is empty. So is his head, until he pushes into their room and sees Andrew lying on the bed.

He’s still wearing his coat. His keys are beside him on the mattress. With his eyes closed the dark circles carved into his face are more than obvious, cutting down into his cheeks. He looks exhausted.

Neil’s heart, done pounding, shivers somewhere in the bottom of his stomach. 

When he leaves the room he takes the baby monitor off of the dresser on the way past and closes the door behind him. The part of him that wants to lie down too is ruthlessly shut down by the idea that…where he has been, anyway? Playing a sport?

He puts away the groceries, then steps out onto the balcony with the monitor in his pocket. There’s a packet of cigarettes and a lighter lying on the table, but Neil’s first thought when he looks at them is that he’ll have to put them away so Kevin can’t get into them. Sacrifice. Something like that.

He rests his crossed forearms on the metal of the handrail, then drops his forehead on them. 

He’s not sure how long it’s been when he hears Kevin stir through the monitor and start to make unhappy noises. He slips back inside and goes to him before he can get louder, and finds him standing up in his crib on wobbly legs and sniffling.

Kayleigh emailed Neil a picture of Kevin pushing himself up on the couch to stand for the first time barely weeks ago. Now she’s going to miss him taking his first steps, and everything else-

Kevin reaches a hand to Neil, lower lip quivering. Neil sweeps him up and curls him into his arms before that can progress to wailing.

Neil’s sympathy has never been anything to write home about. His self-pity is much more remarkable. That and the way Kevin clings to him is enough to make his eyes burn. He closes them and rocks in the sway which is already becoming second nature, swallowing.

A familiar hand clenches tight about the back of his neck and stays there.

After a moment, Neil says, “You should have kept sleeping.” His voice sounds rough, but it doesn’t crack.

The hand squeezes tight and then releases. Andrew doesn’t say anything, but Neil is helpless to do anything but follow him when he leaves the room. 

“I’m staying,” he bursts out halfway into the living room, coming to a stop. “For a couple of weeks.”

Andrew drops onto the couch and looks at him. “Alright.”

“I should have stayed,” Neil says. “I told you I wouldn’t run.”

That was so long ago now that it’s fogged in Neil’s memory, the way even the strongest good memories do where bad memories are always crystal clear. It had nothing to do with Kevin, nothing to do with anything except the two of them and the shadow of Neil’s long-dead father.

“You aren’t running,” Andrew replies. He still looks tired, but there’s an animation to his face that fills the hollows of his cheeks, turns him regularly implacable.

Kevin wriggles in a request to be put down, and then crawls for the pile of toys Neil threw onto the area rug Allison gave them when they moved here because ‘a nice apartment demands nice furniture, boys’. Neil watches him, for a moment exactly like the baby he knew who visited instead of lived here, and swallows.

When he looks up, Andrew is still watching him. “You’re not going anywhere. None of us is.”

Neil would like to say that Andrew seeing to the heart of whatever Neil is feeling and saying it out loud before Neil can recognise it in himself is a recent thing, but it’s always been the case.

It’s not a promise. It’s not faith. It’s realism, based on probability. Neil guesses even they can only get so unlucky.


	9. 2 (.5) years

Andrew takes Kevin to his first Exy game at the age of two-and-a-half. He’s been to family practices before, toddling about in a miniature version of Neil’s jersey, but Andrew has put off taking him to a game thus far. That’s mostly because the games start after Kevin’s bedtime and Andrew is the one who will have to deal with him tomorrow when he’s in an inevitably hideous mood.

It’s also partly because Kevin is fascinated with the game, and Andrew would prefer that only one of them be obsessed with it as long as he can get away with it. That was never going to be that long, though.

To be fair, Kevin is also fascinated by the squirrels in the local park, and the grocery store in general – something about the colours of the packaging - and Neil when he’s still in bed when Kevin gets up. The bar isn’t all that high.

Neil hands over their tickets with pleased pink cheeks, and makes sure there’s someone in a team shirt to usher them up to the box reserved for family members. Kevin stares about himself with huge eyes from his spot on Andrew’s hip, bewitched by the noise and the unfamiliar sights. 

The box is fairly busy, owing to the fact that this is a big game – conference finals – and Kevin is hardly the only child. The faces are familiar at this point through exposure if not interest, and it just goes to show how much Andrew’s life has changed that there are people who look genuinely pleased to see him here.

“Hi boys,” Annabelle says cheerfully. She’s the partner of Neil’s vice-captain de Silva. The baby in her arms is wrinkled and vaguely frog-like with newness. “Long time no see.”

“Baby,” Kevin points out helpfully, stretching his hand out to the roll of blankets and small human. “Hi baby.”

Andrew has no idea where he picked that fascination up from. He just knows it isn’t from Neil.

“Ask,” Andrew reminds him. 

“Can I?” Kevin asks immediately. Neil didn’t teach him the manners, either, clearly. 

“You want to say hi?” Annabelle asks, indulgent like most people are in the face of Kevin’s serious expression and big eyes. “This is Clara. She’s five days old.”

“Did your doctor sign the forms or did you just run?” Andrew asks. Annabelle winks at him while holding Clara up so Kevin can examine her. Her face scrunches discontentedly, but she doesn’t cry.

Kevin is gentle, patting at the blanket once and muttering something incomprehensible even to Andrew’s practised ear. They never tell you that toddler-translation is a learned parental skill, and particular to every toddler. 

“Baby sleep,” he observes. He might have a better vocabulary if he had more talkative parents, but he seems to do alright. Andrew might have gotten into the habit of into saying the names of things every time he picks something up – ‘pen’, for example, after removing it from Kevin’s mouth – but he and Kevin are the only ones who know about it. Neil doesn’t count.

“Yeah, she is. It’s hard work being born. Harder than being a toddler,” Annabelle says.

“Tobbler,” Kevin repeats, and then shoves his face against the soft toy dog he goes everywhere with.

“Come sit with us,” Annabelle suggests, or more accurately commands, dragging them along behind her. Andrew takes a seat and frees Kevin, who toddles immediately to the window overlooking the court. His palm leaves a smear when he smacks it against the glass, and he looks back at Andrew pointedly.

“Your Dad’s down there,” Annabelle tells him, earning a big grin. To Andrew she adds, “God he’s cute. I want one like  _that_.”

“Too late to send this one back,” Andrew notes, watching Kevin sidle over to a huddle of older kids, perhaps ten or so, and try to insert himself and his toy into their group. He can be shy, but he can also be a bossy little shit. Thankfully the older kids seem to take him in stride. Adults might make allowances for the child of Kayleigh Day – and now Neil Josten – but children don’t care about parentage.

“Probably,” Annabelle agrees, though she’s smiling warm and gentle as she says it. “Hey, can you hold her for a sec? I want to run to the bathroom before the game starts.”

“Yes,” Andrew replies, doing the complicated juggle of baby-transferral. Clara yawns, eyes popping open for a moment to blink at him. She really is new, eyes still the indistinct blue of the just-born. They missed this part with Kevin, which Andrew doesn’t regret at all, but there’s something gently restful about her content weight against his chest as she settles back down. 

Annabelle isn’t gone long, which is good because when the announcer’s voice blares over the speakers Kevin startles and makes a beeline for Andrew. He attempts to pull himself up onto Andrew’s lap, looking torn between bravado and nerves as he says, “Daddy, look.”

“I am looking,” Andrew replies, hefting him up and spinning him around so he can actually see. “See that?”

Down on the court Neil is entering behind the referees for the coin toss, all geared up besides his helmet. He approaches the opposing captain with a strut that Andrew shouldn’t find attractive.

“Poppy,” Kevin recognises, and claps his hands. His soft toy flops onto the ground under Andrew’s chair. Neil once left it beneath a restaurant table under similar circumstances, and had to drive a half-hour back to pick it up when Kevin refused to sleep without it. Andrew isn’t always grateful for his memory, but he won’t be coming back to the stadium because the kid won’t stop crying.

Kevin, whose attention span is generally reserved solely for mind-numbing children’s television, seems transfixed through most of the game in the pair of ear-protectors Andrew shoved onto his head. The box is full of irritated yelling and cheers by turn, and Kevin has no idea of the rules or the actual concept of winning, but there’s something in the speed and rhythm of the game that holds his focus.

Andrew hates that he can understand that, but he’s also resigned to it. Exy was more than a crutch to him even if it wasn’t his purpose in life, and he grew out of lying to himself at twenty-five.

And he was never close with Kayleigh, not in the way Neil was, but he knows her better now than he ever did when she was alive because of Kevin. Mostly that means it’s lucky Neil makes plenty of money, because buying new Exy equipment for a growing kid is bound to be expensive.

The Sentinels win and Neil scores an extra goal the last few seconds of the game which means the entire team crashes onto him in celebration. The scene in the box is similar to that on the court, excluding those holding newborns and Andrew. 

This win means a run at national finals – more training, more travel, more tension – but Andrew isn’t bothered now like he would have been a few years earlier. He knows Neil is coming back.

Neil meets them outside the changing room dressed in a suit and slightly crooked tie. He’s not a grinner, but his expression brightens when he spots them. He holds out his arms a bit, and Kevin copies him with fervour. Several cameras click. It’s the first time any journalists have got photos of Neil with Kevin outside of stalking them paparazzi-style in the grocery store. 

Half of Neil’s popularity comes from how difficult he is to photograph – Andrew can count on one hand the number of photos of the two of them together to hit the news. One was the two of them standing two people from each other in their college team photo.

“Hey,” Neil says to them both, taking Kevin onto his hip. The fingers of his other hand slip around the edge of Andrew’s shirt, which just so happens to be a jersey with the number 10 emblazoned on the back under ‘Josten’, keeping him close. “Did you have fun?”

Kevin babbles something that includes the words ‘ball’ and ‘baby’ and ‘Poppa’. Neil nods along as though he understands perfectly. Then he turns to Andrew, smirking. “Did  _you_  have fun?”

Andrew gives him a look. “At least you won this time.”

Neil’s smile grows. He murmurs, “I can’t wait to read that quote in an article tomorrow. ‘Husband’s support makes all the difference in semi-final win’.”

“You mean you can’t wait to see the photo in an article tomorrow,” Andrew corrects, unimpressed, instead of  _I’m not your husband_.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Neil lies. He’s very close, Kevin already starting to drowse against his shoulder. It would be easy to feel like they’re in a bubble, the three of them, but Andrew knows there’s a world full of cameras and nosey journalists and homophobes right outside and looking in.

Andrew doesn’t care about them. He kisses Neil anyway.

 

* * *

 

Kevin screeches when Andrew draws him away from the stacks of toys he’s been systematically building and destroying with increasing fervour, but he’s still down for his nap ten minutes later with his soft toy’s ear held in one fist.

Neil is tidying the wreckage of the living room with one hand and scrolling his phone with the other. He tosses the phone to Andrew, who catches it and then throws it back without looking at it. Neil catches it with a hand also holding a bright red train carriage.

“It’s a good photo,” he protests, attempting a sulky tone that mostly comes off as amused.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Andrew replies.


	10. 8 months

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kinda sexy, but it doesn't stay sexy for long.

Putting Kevin down for the night is generally both the sweetest moment of the day and the biggest relief. As soon as the clock hits 7pm he’s already most of the way asleep, slumped against one of them and blinking slow, fingers in his mouth. It’s the matter of moments to transfer him to his cot and watch him settle in to sleep.

Neil closes the bedroom door behind himself, monitor in hand. Andrew is on the couch still, bare feet kicked up on the coffee table and a file open in his lap that he’s blatantly not reading.

Neil would love to say that he spends the hours between Kevin’s bedtime and his own doing the things that are impossible to do with a baby in tow during the day, but in actuality he hits the couch and wakes up a while later with absolutely no recollection of having fallen asleep. He stretches a little, bumping Andrew’s thigh without meaning to.

Andrew jerks, drawing breath, and then says, “Kevin?”

The monitor is silent, but Neil’s neck is killing him. He tries to stretch it with a wince, pushing himself up to sitting. Voice sleep-thick, he says, “He’s fine. I’m just old.”

Fingers curl around the back of his neck, kneading at the tight muscles. “Go to bed then.”

“Remember the days when we used to be awake at 3AM?” Neil asks, submitting to the sensation. It’s good-and-painful, which is pretty applicable to his whole life. But also, he has some pretty fond memories of sitting on the roof of their college dorm well after midnight.

“Yesterday?” Andrew replies, and he has a point. Neil’s not sure whether it’s because of dreams or just some kind of inconvenient internal baby-alarm, but Kevin often wakes up in the early hours of the morning.

They’ve got a system for who gets up to settle him, even though that system is generally ‘whoever kicks the other the hardest gets to stay in bed’.

“Yeah,” Neil says, though it’s more of a sigh as his neck turns from steel cable to jelly under Andrew’s fingers.

The massage stops, and Andrew jostles him instead before letting go. “Go to bed.”

Neil turns, taking the somewhat rumpled file that has half slid off of Andrew’s lap and putting it on the table. “I will if you will.”

“I am,” is the reply as Andrew pushes himself up. His knees crack audibly in the process. Neil takes the hand he offers and lets him pull him upright too.

Andrew takes the bathroom first, and by the time Neil makes it out after brushing his teeth the bedroom is already mostly dark besides the lamp on Neil’s side of the bed. Andrew is stretched out on his back, arms thrown over his head onto the pillow.

Neil rolls under the covers, letting the mattress embrace him as he curves onto his side. “Light off?”

Andrew turns his head at that, looking Neil over with surprisingly awake eyes. Neil’s body responds to the expression before his brain does, and that’s only half because he can’t remember the last time they did more than kiss.

“Leave it,” Andrew replies, rolling onto his side so they’re face to face. It means there’s barely a sliver of space between them, and Neil is the one to close it, hand to Andrew’s chest over his shirt and mouth to Andrew’s jaw, feather-light.

He can’t resist smirking at the impatient noise Andrew makes as he ducks his head to catch Neil’s lips. It’s different from the almost-pecks they’ve been exchanging since Kevin crash-landed in their household, frequent but more about reassurance and proximity than anything else. Neil could have sworn that his libido had crawled off to die the second he got the call about Kayleigh and would maybe make a reappearance sometime after Kevin’s eighteenth birthday, but apparently that’s not entirely accurate.

‘Not entirely accurate’ in that he’s basically gasping in seconds, his body abruptly remembering that it’s been _weeks_ , and it’s not like Neil can’t go without or had even realised that he’s missed it, but the relief is as overwhelming as the rush of arousal.

He’s not the only one, either. Andrew’s hands are everywhere at once on his body, to the point where Neil is halfway to giggling even as he’s stripped out of his shirt. That’s also because it’s the only three seconds where his mouth is free enough to make a noise besides muffled moaning.

“Be quiet,” Andrew warns, rolling Neil under himself with one hand. For one second Neil is happily ensconced in the fiction where all he has to worry about is disturbing their neighbours, not for the first time, reaches for Andrew’s waistband with one very clear goal in mind -

\- and then nearly jumps out of his skin when the monitor on the dresser comes to life with the sound of Kevin crying.

Andrew, having stiffened at the noise, relaxes but pushes himself up and off of Neil. He lands on his back beside Neil with a little puff of displaced air from the mattress.

“Fuck. _Fuck_ ,” Neil says, somewhat dazedly. Sometimes in the first hazy seconds of being awake in the morning, he forgets that Kevin is his now, but that’s quite different from having the reminder basically shoved into his brain. “Give me a minute, I’ll…”

He needs more than a minute. He can’t look at Andrew because he knows if he does Andrew will be flushed and breathing a little quickly, neither which will help him get himself back under control. He hides his eyes in the crook of his elbow.

Andrew, nearly noiselessly, sighs. Then the mattress jars as he rolls off of the bed and stands. “You can get him next.”

Neil makes a noise of assent, listening to Andrew’s footsteps receding, and then the door to Kevin’s room clicking open via the monitor. Kevin’s sobs instantly lessen when he realises there’s someone with him.

There’s something Neil never would have known about Andrew if not for Kevin, and it’s that he’s not stoic enough to refuse to hum to a fussy baby when it’s the quickest way to settle him down. Also, he’s more tuneful than Neil would have expected.

The next thing he knows, he’s blinking awake to sunlight and the gentle burbling of Kevin barely awake next door. Andrew is crashed out next to him, face half-buried in the comforter as he makes that little whistling sound he always does in deep sleep.

“’m getting up,” Neil croaks, because Andrew prefers to be woken up by Neil’s voice than by him actually getting up. Andrew grunts, his face screwing up as he pushes himself further under the blankets. Neil leaves him to it, pushing himself up and hunting for his discarded shirt. Apparently Andrew folded it up on the dresser last night when he came back to bed, and somehow didn’t disturb Neil in the process at all.

Well, parenthood may not be good for their sex lives, but they’ll never underappreciate sleep again. Also, Kevin reaching for Neil from his cot when he appears above him isn’t too bad, either.


	11. 15 years

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was not intentionally this long.
> 
> Warnings for fighting, very minor injuries, mentions of homophobia and kind of...unintentional self-outing? I don't know how to warn for that, you can check the endnotes for a summary.

They got Kevin his first phone at nine, which had mostly meant Nicky made a ridiculous number of jokes about how Neil hadn’t got a phone until he was nineteen, and hadn’t learned how to keep it turned on until Andrew had threatened to leave him. The second part is untrue – it actually took until Kevin’s arrival, and Neil’s consequent descent into protective paranoia, for him to keep it on and charged at all times.

Kevin, being significantly better adjusted than Neil can ever hope to be, uses his phone exactly like a teenager, which is to say that it’s basically an extension of his arm. He’s a texter, and considering the number of messages Andrew receives he’s willing to bet Kevin is singlehandedly filling up his friends’ inboxes.

He doesn’t call as much, which doesn’t bother Andrew at all. It does mean that when Andrew steps out of court and turns his phone on, the ten missed calls make it immediately obvious that something has happened. Andrew doesn’t bother listening to the ten corresponding messages.

Kevin picks up partway through the second ring like his phone was in his hand. His voice is small when he says, “Dad.”

At fifteen, he calls Andrew and Neil by their names most of the time. It’s usually a warm buzz of something like nostalgia when Andrew hears it now, but right now Kevin’s sounds too shaken.

“What’s wrong?” Andrew asks, making for his car as he speaks.

The response is so rushed out that Andrew can barely understand it. He mostly gets the words ‘Jeremy’ and ‘fight’. “You fought with Jeremy?”

“No!” Kevin yelps.

“Breathe. Then tell me again,” Andrew commands, unlocking the car and climbing in.

Kevin does so, audibly. “We were leaving to walk home and some of the players from Southside were waiting outside school, and one of them called Jean a slur and Jeremy hit him and then the teachers came out-”

“Where are you right now?” Andrew interrupts, somehow without sighing. It figures Jeremy Knox would be the one to start a fight of the three of them, short for his age and with that ridiculous sense of morality.

“…the principal’s office,” Kevin mumbles after a moment. Andrew starts up the car and pulls out of the lot, turning towards the school. “We all are. I think I sprained my ankle. They called you.”

“I was in court.”

“I know, I told them. Um, I think they might have called Neil too.” Kevin sounds rightfully nervous about that.

Andrew looks at the time on the dash. Neil would have gotten out of training ten minutes ago. “You better hope I get there before he does.”

 

* * *

 

Andrew does make it to the school first, though only barely. He’s just locked his car and turned for the front doors when there’s an aggressive screech of tires and Neil’s silver Audi flies into the lot.

Andrew watches as he climbs out from behind the wheel and slams the door behind himself, every movement controlled. The overdramatic driving aside, Neil’s temper is always worse when it’s cold. Right now there’s no sign of the narrowed eyes and rosy cheeks of his more everyday irritation, just chilly fury.

When he gets within earshot of Andrew, he snarls, “What the fuck is going on?”

“Stop,” Andrew tells him, pulling him up short with his tone. The anger doesn’t go, but Neil has always been good at listening to Andrew. “The school left you a message.”

“The boys were jumped outside the school, yes, you know that. Is Kevin alright? Come on-” he goes to walk past Andrew into the school, but Andrew stops him with a hand on his chest.

“Breathe,” Andrew tells him. “Kevin can’t afford to have you run in there and say something stupid.”

He’s been the kid pulled in for fighting before, more times than Neil, who always kept his head down, could probably ever dream of. Those fights were always warranted, but the teachers didn’t always believe him – hardly ever did, once he’d got a reputation. It’s not the first time Andrew has wanted better than what he had for Kevin, and it won’t be the last.

Neil looks him dead-on for a long moment, and then finally exhales a little puff of breath. The anger drops back from the forefront of his eyes, covered over and in by a more calculating front.

“Be smart,” Andrew says, patting him on the chest once. “I know it might be hard for you.”

“Big talk from the man who barely graduated law school because he’s a tactless bastard,” Neil replies, all of which is true. “Come on.”

He leads the way into the administration building. The receptionist takes one look at them and clearly recognises Neil, because she’s quick to direct them down the hall and into a conference room where the boys are waiting.

The three of them are lined up along wall, shoulder to shoulder in solidarity. Kevin’s foot is up on a chair someone has pulled around in front of him, and he has an ice pack laying over it. Jeremy is holding a similar one to his right eye, though his left is looking more than a little swollen as well.

Neil goes straight for Kevin, who takes one look at them and immediately wells up. He’s grown so much in the last year that even sitting down he and Neil are mismatched, but that doesn’t stop Neil from pulling Kevin in and tucking his head against his belly to give him a moment.

“Are you two alright?” Andrew asks Jean and Jeremy. Jeremy’s chin is set, though his one visible eye is a little overly bright. Jean, who is in the weedy stage of his growth spurt but who is clearly going to tower over all of them, has a split lip and bruised knuckles and an expression like a storm cloud.

“We’re okay,” Jeremy replies for both of them. He pats Jean on the thigh with the hand that isn’t holding the ice pack, and though Jean’s expression doesn’t change he does relax into the contact for a second.

“Where are the kids who did this?” Neil asks, leaning back a bit but keeping a hand on Kevin’s shoulder.

“Back to their school,” Kevin says, carefully shrugging his other shoulder. “They came and picked them up.”

“No one called the police?” Neil asks, and then for a moment looks vaguely bemused at himself for asking that question despite not exactly being the type to automatically consider involving the cops.

“Someone said something about us pressing charges, but…” Jeremy fills in, and then shrugs tightly. “It won’t matter.”

Neil opens his mouth, and then closes it again. Jeremy seems to blink and rally himself, saying, “We’re fine, anyway.”

“I don’t know that Coach Martinez is going to agree with that,” Andrew notes. Most of the man’s first line is sitting here. “Where are your parents?”

“They’re out of the state,” Jeremy says. “My sister is looking after me but she’s at work and even if she left she’d be stuck on the bus for ages. Mom told Principal Whitman you could stand in for them anyway.”

Wonderful. “Jean?” Andrew asks. Jean looks up at him, sullen, and then shakes his head. It’s not very surprising.

A door at the other end of the room opens, and a harried-looking middle-aged man emerges. “Mister Minyard, Mister Josten, hello. I’m Henry Whitman. Thank you for coming. I presume you’ve talked to Mrs Knox?”

“Yes,” Andrew lies. “I’ll stand in for Jean’s guardians, too.”

Whitman’s frown deepens. “I’m afraid I can’t get in touch with his parents to confirm that-”

He’ll probably be trying all night. Andrew says, “I won’t begin this conversation without his involvement.”

When Andrew was the age of these kids, he made men like Whitman double down with their rules and protocols, until he was so tied up he couldn’t help but break them. Apparently, it’s much harder to look at a well-respected attorney and not be willing to bend them a little. That, or he just really wants the boys out of his office.

“Alright. Please, come through.” He makes to step back through the door.

“No,” Neil interrupts abruptly. “Kevin needs to keep his weight off his ankle until we can get it checked over.”

“Of course,” Whitman says. He grabs a seat and sets it down across from the three boys. Andrew sits at Kevin’s side. Neil, unsurprisingly, stays standing. “I’ve been in talks with the Principal and board from Southside High. The students involved will be internally punished – it’s clear that they were at the very least provocative – and whether you decide to press charges with the police is up to you. I would like it if the three of you would give me your account of what happened.”

Kevin looks at Andrew, and Jeremy bites his lip, and in the ensuing silence it’s Jean that starts to speak. “We were leaving when Martin called out to Jeremy. I told him to ignore them and keep walking, but he answered them. Not rudely, he was polite.”

“You knew who the other students were?” Whitman asks.

Jean looks at him like he’s an idiot. “They’re all players from Southside’s Exy team.”

“Not all of them, but most. There were seven of them waiting for us outside the gate,” Kevin continues. “Jean told them to fuh…go away, and told Jeremy they weren’t worth his time. Then Martin called Jean a slur and Jeremy warned him not to use that word, and he said it again, so Jeremy hit him. Then Martin hit him back. He’s like six feet tall. I went to grab Jeremy and one of the others pushed me over and I hurt my ankle.”

“It was Dave Seymour,” Jean supplies, and then, with more relish than is strictly advisable in his situation, adds, “I broke his nose.”

Whitman says, “So, there was certainly provocation. It would have been much easier if you hadn’t escalated things to violence, Mister Knox.”

“There would have been violence either way,” Andrew says quietly. “You think the others came all the way out here just to call kids some names?”

Whitman nods. “I know that. It just makes the situation trickier. You know what it’s like – the parents of those students will be quick to say that they were just boys being boys, that it was these three taking their words the wrong way that turned it into a fight. What was it they said to you, Jeremy?”

Jeremy’s well known as the good-natured golden boy from the Exy team, popular with his classmates and liked by all the teachers. That’s probably why Whitman looks surprised when he says, “I’m not saying it.”

“It would make it simpler when I talk to the board from Southside-”

“I’m not repeating it,” Jeremy repeats.

“Mister Moreau?” Whitman tries. Jean doesn’t even look at him. “Boys, it would be much easier to settle this if you’re completely honest with me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kevin bursts out. “It was a dick thing to say, why do you need to know? If Jeremy hadn’t hit him, I would have.”

“Kevin,” Neil warns. Andrew is impressed he doesn’t burst into flames from the sheer hypocrisy of his unspoken _don’t make this worse._

Jeremy, jaw tight, says, “It was a homophobic slur.”

Whitman looks at him for a moment, and then sighs. “I’m not saying it’s right, but you know as well as I do that lots of kids bandy those sorts of words around without thinking. You can’t fight all of them. He probably didn’t mean it in the literal sense, anyway.”

The sheer audacity – or maybe ‘stupidity’ is the better word for it - of him to say that in front of Andrew and Neil both is so great that neither of them says anything for a moment. Neil is just opening his mouth when Jeremy beats him to it.

“I’m not fighting all of them. Just the ones who say them to my friends.” Jeremy twitches a look to the side, eyes flickering to Neil and away again. Somehow, it seems to strengthen his resolve. “He meant it, but even if he didn’t. It’s not just a word. To me. And yeah, he wasn’t saying it to me, but I don’t care.”

“Jeremy,” Andrew interrupts. The boy is bright red in the face, barely restraining himself from crying. “It’s okay.”

Kevin throws an arm around Jeremy’s shoulders, with all the abandon of a frightened child looking to comfort and be comforted. Andrew takes a look at them both, and at Jean frozen on the other side, and says, “Whitman. Let’s take this somewhere private.”

Whitman looks at Andrew with the incoming realisation that he’s now dancing on the edge of a potential civil rights suit and nods a little desperately. “Come into my office.”

Andrew presses Neil into his own seat by Kevin, an unspoken command to stay put, and then follows Whitman into the aforementioned office. Whitman sits. Andrew doesn’t.

“When you speak with the principal and board from that school, I want you to pass on the message that the students involved should be stood down, and that the ones from the Exy team should be immediately removed from the roster up until graduation. They won’t be offered NCAA positions after this anyway,” he says, measured and calm. “If they don’t do those things, then we will be forced to take legal action.”

Even as he says it – and means it – he’s aware that less than ten years ago he would have said nothing and made plans instead, the kind of plans that would prevent those boys from hurting anyone else ever again. And he thought Neil a hypocrite, before.

“I can pass that on,” Whitman says.

“There’s a good chance that the press will get wind of this because there’s always interest in Kevin. We’ll continue to stick to our usual policy of not commenting, unless our hands are forced.” Neil will have a field day.

Whitman nods.

“I understand that you can punish Kevin, Jean and Jeremy as you see fit, for resorting to physical violence,” Andrew continues, “but I hope you’ll consider the circumstances. Particularly surrounding the child who you just forced to out himself in an environment which is apparently unsafe for him.”

Whitman swallows visibly.

 

* * *

 

Five minutes later, Andrew leaves the office. Four heads pop up like they’re startled by his reappearance, their expressions all very similar.

“We’re leaving,” Andrew informs them, gently removing the ice pack from Kevin’s ankle. Jean steps in to help Kevin up, a good use of his height despite the fact that he’s so skinny he struggles to bear up under Kevin’s weight. Andrew takes the other side, arm around Kevin’s waist.

“What did you-” Neil attempts, but stops when he sees Andrew’s expression.

Andrew ends up with all three of the teenagers pressed together in the backseat of his car like he’s a chauffeur. Neil gives him a look at this but doesn’t comment as he gets into his own car.

The first five minutes of the drive is silent. Then Jeremy squawks, “Mister Minyard, please don’t take me home-”

“We’re going to our apartment,” Andrew interrupts calmly. “I’ll speak with your sister. The both of you can stay tonight. You’re all suspended from school tomorrow anyway.”

“What?” Kevin demands, outraged.

“It’s a Friday, and you’ll be spending the day off of your feet anyway,” Andrew says. “There has to at least be a pretence of punishment.”

“We were right and you know it,” Kevin huffs.

Andrew doesn’t reply, because Kevin is, of course, right.

“Three day weekend,” Jeremy notes, which falls flat.

There are at least five more minutes of quiet before Jean says, “Jeremy,” in a strangled tone, and there’s an awful sob.

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy says, tear-wet and mortified when Andrew flicks him a look in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry, I – Mister Minyard, _please_ don’t tell my parents I’m-”

“He won’t tell them,” Kevin says, with absolute certainty, and this time Jean is the one to hug Jeremy, though he does it with far less of Kevin’s presumably-straight teenage-boy-ness.

Ah. Andrew continues to keep his mouth firmly closed as he drives the last few minutes to their apartment building.

Neil has beaten them to the underground parking lot but he’s waiting for them, though his expression says he regrets that when the righteously angry teenagers he last saw unload themselves with red eyes and still-trembling lips. Between the two of them, they get all three boys into the apartment. Jean and Jeremy settle on the couch, but Neil takes Kevin through into the kitchen to get a better look at his ankle. Andrew opens the fridge and contemplates the contents, before resigning himself to ordering Thai.

“This doesn’t look so bad,” comes the eventual verdict. “We’ll keep icing it tonight and I’ll get someone from the team to have a look tomorrow. Don’t put any weight on it for now though.”

Kevin huffs out an unhappy sigh. “We have a game next week.”

“They’ll be fine without you,” Neil replies. “Well, as long as Jeremy can see the goal by then.”

“He better be,” Kevin mutters, accepting a fresh ice pack wrapped in a hand towel from Neil. “This is why fighting is bad, right? We don’t have time for this.”

Even Neil rolls his eyes at that one. It’s pretty doubtful Kevin will ever grow out of dramaticism.

“You didn’t fight, though,” Andrew notes. His knuckles are unmarked, though he has bruising on one forearm where he’s clearly turned aside someone trying to hit him.

“I hurt my ankle.”

Andrew gives him a look. “Before that.”

He’s been training Kevin is basic self-defence since he was eight, and then turned him over to Renee when he was twelve to learn more. One trained teenager and two untrained ones versus seven was never going to be a fair fight, but it would have been a more evenly matched than Jean and Jeremy alone with Kevin hanging back.

“Renee told me I should only use my skills to keep myself and other people safe,” Kevin says.

“Okay, Captain America,” Neil snorts. “We raised a pacifist, Andrew. I guess we should be proud of that.”

“You weren’t worried that you weren’t safe?” Andrew asks. Kevin isn’t aggressive, but he’s also not hesitant.

“Well,” Kevin says, and then makes a face. “Jeremy was faster.”

That makes more sense. Andrew gives him the menu from the restaurant down the street. “Find out what your friends want to eat and I’ll send Neil out for it.”

That’s how they end up with three unconscious teenage boys in their living room. Neil picks up Kevin’s discarded ice pack and throws blankets over them rather than run the gauntlet of waking them to relocate them again, and Andrew picks up the remains of their meal to trash it in the kitchen.

A low voice interrupts him from behind halfway through. “Not that much has changed.”

Andrew hums in request for clarification, putting half a container of rice in the fridge.

“You’re still fighting for other people.” A hand reaches out and catches one of his, examining the scars on his knuckles. “Less bruising this way though.”

“Did you forget my day job?” Andrew asks, not breaking Neil’s hold on him. “It involves a lot of talking.”

“Kind of,” Neil admits, bumping his forehead down on Andrew’s shoulder and curving his free arm around his waist. “Half of me still remembers the kid from college who just couldn’t resist punching people in the face when they were assholes.”

“There is less risk of getting arrested this way.”

“Guess we’re just more adaptable than I thought,” Neil notes. “Does that mean we’re real grown-ups now?”

“If you don’t know that then I can’t help you,” Andrew says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: In the process of defending his actions in retaliating against someone using a homophobic slur, Jeremy outs himself as not-straight in a meeting with the principal of his school.


	12. 11 months

Neil is adamant that it’s Allison’s fault, afterwards.

She’s the one who ‘coerced’ – meaning; asked and just didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer - Neil into attending a fashion show dressed in her newest sports-oriented line, and in an unexplainable social phenomenon turned him from successful-athlete-who-only-Exy-fans-care-about to an actual celebrity.

Celebrity comes with a few perks, but the major downside is the lack of privacy. That, and apparently it’s the reason why Andrew is here in a downtown police station, being ushered into an interrogation room.

Aaron looks up when the door opens, and makes a face when he sees Andrew. “You couldn’t have just paid my bail?”

“No one has pressed charges against you yet,” Andrew replies, pulling out the chair across from his brother and dropping into it. “What happened?”

“Didn’t Neil tell you?”

Andrew is too old for this. He kicks Aaron in the shin. “Hurry up.”

Aaron’s scowl deepens. “You’re not that kind of lawyer anyway.”

“There’s a reporter out there whinging because you punched him and broke his camera. There are also several witnesses attesting that you were provoked. If you’re smart you won’t need ‘that’ kind of lawyer, but if you talk to the cops like this they’re probably going to charge you anyway for being an asshole.” He kicks Aaron again, harder.

“Fuck!”

“I don’t have all day,” Andrew prompts.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Aaron mutters, and then more loudly, “We were leaving fucking Safeway, and some asshole reporter appeared and shoved his camera into your boyfriend’s face. Apparently he didn’t notice the _infant child_ in his arms, and his lens hit Kevin in the face.”

“And?”

“And then I punched him,” Aaron concludes. “Breaking the camera wasn’t intentional. He went over backwards like a clown, dropped it on the asphalt.”

“In case you were wondering, unintentional destruction of property doesn’t go down that much better in court than intentional destruction.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t going to court.”

“Perhaps if you swear less, and try to look sorry,” Andrew suggests.

“I’m not sorry,” Aaron snarls back. “This is bullshit – Kevin was _screaming-_ ”

“Kevin is fine,” Andrew says. “There isn't a mark on him, it was the surprise more than anything. However, you did me a favour, really. If you hadn’t gotten to the reporter first, Neil would have killed him.”

Aaron’s mouth had been open to continue, but at that he shuts it. He looks surprised for a moment before the expression fades. “I doubt they would have given him bail.”

Neil, from his family of mobsters, who got tangled up with the FBI before he was twenty and is still on watchlists almost a decade later, would have been in supermax so fast his head would have spun, celebrity or no. Andrew hums his agreement.

“You’re welcome, then,” Aaron says.

 

* * *

 

Neil and Kevin are waiting for him out in the bustle of the bullpen, sitting together at Matt Boyd’s desk in his roller chair while Matt sits on the edge of said desk. Kevin notices Andrew first, giving Andrew a grin. Neil follows his attention and gives Andrew a tired quirk of his mouth which is clearly his best attempt at a smile.

“Don’t be fooled by that,” Matt warns once Andrew is in earshot. “He’s about to throw the tantrum of the century.”

“Which one?” Andrew asks, which earns him a barking laugh. He stands close enough to Neil that his hip bumps Neil’s side.

“Da,” Kevin says, tugging insistently at his shirt. He then makes the half-excited, half-terrifying shrieking noise he always makes when he’s overtired and wants attention. Eager to stave off a meltdown, Andrew picks him up and bounces him. He gets a sticky attempt at a kiss on his cheek for his trouble.

“You could take him to another room,” he suggests to Neil quietly. There are some perks to having friends amongst the cops, even if it is just requisitioning an empty office to settle a cranky baby in.

“Was waiting on you,” Neil replies, and leans his forehead against Andrew’s side. He doesn’t flinch when Kevin’s foot nearly gets him in the face. “And my criminal brother-in-law.”

Matt snorts another laugh. “Please call him that to his face while I’m around to record it.”

“Is the reporter pressing charges?” Andrew asks.

Matt throws a look over his shoulder, and Andrew follows his gaze to where Dan Wilds is speaking with a man with a black eye. The man notices their attention, eyes flickering to them. When he notices Andrew watching, all the colour drains abruptly from his face.

“Hm,” Matt says thoughtfully. “Nah, I don’t think so.”


	13. 8 months

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neil is definitely the highly-strung parent. Andrew is tired and great. Also, cat ownership.

Before Kayleigh, Neil hadn’t lost anyone close to him for – years. You would think it was the kind of thing that, once you’d become used to it, you stayed inured, but the years since have softened his memory of the grief, and his resignation as well.

The fear is ever-present, and not at all conducive to sleep. Neil hasn’t been getting a lot with an unsettled baby in the house anyway, but the paranoia that something might happen to Kevin if he closes his eyes is enough he lies awake for hours despite the exhaustion.

“Neil,” Andrew mutters blurrily one night a while after midnight.

“The ceiling needs repainting,” Neil replies. There’s flaking in one corner, and fly marks around the lights.

Andrew sighs. He reaches across Neil, fingertips bumping into the baby monitor Neil is holding to his chest. “Really?”

“I’ll hire a ladder,” Neil says vaguely. The cycle seems to go terrible-fear-that-Kevin-might-have-died-in-his-sleep, then purposeful-diversion-of-topic, then sleepiness, then back to terrible-fear-that-somehow-Kevin-crying-over-the-monitor-might-not-be-enough-to-wake-him-up. Sometimes he falls asleep, usually just in time for Kevin to actually wake him up.

Andrew climbs out of bed, pushing the bedroom door open. There’s a soft _mrrp_ and then the weight of one of the cats landing on the mattress. Neil follows Andrew’s footsteps through the apartment – across the hall, followed by the soft _shush_ of the door to Kevin’s room opening. Then, more footsteps as Andrew returns, silhouetted momentarily in the doorway. He doesn’t close the door behind himself.

“He’s fine,” he says, and then burrows back under the blankets. He takes the monitor from Neil’s hand, setting it on his own bedside table, and then uses a foot to jostle at Sir until she moves onto Neil’s side of the bed.

It won’t last long, and that’s Andrew’s sacrifice – opening the bedroom door means Neil will definitely hear any crying, but it also means the cats can get on the bed at will.

Neil rolls onto his side, warming with affection and the twin furry weights of Sir and King snuggled up to him. At some point, he sleeps.

There is an unintended side effect of this, though Neil doesn’t discover it until a few days later. He slips into Kevin’s room to check on him before they go to bed, and as he pushes the door open properly the hall light catches a pair of reflecting eyes hanging in the darkness over the crib.

Neil isn’t proud of the noise he makes. The eyes disappear, and he gropes the light switch on just in time to see King’s tail retreat under the dresser. Kevin, startled into sudden and bright wakefulness, begins to scream.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Neil says, his heart pounding in his chest, and goes to Kevin, lifting him out of the crib. “Sorry, buddy.”

“Neil?” Andrew demands, skidding to a halt in the doorway.

“The fucking cat,” Neil replies, which is, to be fair, usually Andrew’s catchphrase. Andrew blinks. “He was sitting over the bed like a gargoyle.”

Andrew mutters something that sounds suspiciously like _scared of a cat_ and crouches down by the dresser, peering underneath. A disgruntled paw reaches out and swats at him.

By the time Neil gets Kevin settled and back into bed, Andrew has half-bribed and half-scruffed King out of the room. Neil slinks into their bedroom to find both cats on his side of the mattress and sighs.

They have an almost-repeat of the situation when Andrew reaches into the crib in the near-dark and touches warm living fur instead of the expected baby, but eventually they have to concede that neither Kevin nor the cats are worse-off for occasionally slipping from their room into Kevin’s in the night.

After that, the cats and Kevin manage to fall into a healthy coexistence – King, though often prickly, is surprisingly gentle with Kevin, and Kevin responds by not doing any toddler-like things to King. Sir, who is the sweeter of the two, gets dragged around like a soft-toy at least once, but she handles that with tolerant grace.

Neil and Andrew, for their parts, also manage to reconcile pet ownership and child guardianship, too. Neil also starts to sleep like a normal human again rather than anxiety-ridden pseudo-parent, not least because he learns to reject the ‘pseudo’ part.

They work things out, like when Kevin needs to go to bed and when he needs a nap and what and when he eats, and somehow manage to work all of that in around keeping themselves alive and employed. It’s also a matter of realising Kevin is a tiny person, with likes and dislikes. He likes fur and the rug in the living room and oversize plastic blocks and the tinkly not-quite-in-tune music box Renee gives him and Andrew and Neil’s faces.

Neil also knows that Kevin likes to put things in his mouth – even before Kayleigh died, spending time with him involved a large amount of taking back things he had stolen to taste, from keys to sunglasses to expensive electronics.

It’s not always great – for one thing, it involves a lot of spit – but the trade-off seems to be that Kevin is spectacularly unfussy with food. Feeding him mostly involves delivering whatever is on hand into his waiting baby-bird mouth, even when he’s cranky.

So, Kevin likes to figure things out by taste. Neil doesn’t think much of it until he follows Kevin into the kitchen and finds him sitting in front of the cats’ bowls, shovelling a handful of cat food into his mouth.

“Ugh!” Neil yelps.

Kevin startles, pieces spraying across the floor. Then, his face screws up. Then, dribbling pathetically, he starts to cry.

“Fuck sake,” Andrew mutters, world-weary, elbowing Neil out of the way and hefting Kevin off the floor and onto the bench. “It’s just cat food.”

“It’s _not for human consumption_ ,” Neil replies, though Andrew may or may not be talking to him. As far as he’s concerned, cat food smells nothing like anything a human would want to eat, unless that human in a curious toddler.

“Healthy and balanced diet,” Andrew says, a reference to what Kevin’s doctor had listed in the face of Neil’s somewhat desperate plea for information on keeping a small child alive. “He was just tasting. Weren’t you?”

Kevin, who has already stopped crying but whose face is still scrunched up, grunts. Neil notes, “I don’t think it tasted good.”

“I think you shrieking was enough of a deterrent without that anyway.”

“I didn’t _shriek._ ”

“At some point, you’re going to stop yelling at him accidentally,” Andrew notes. “There might be a few years between then and when you start yelling at him on purpose.” The unspoken  _if I'm lucky_ rings loud and clear.

Neil steps on Andrew’s foot, on purpose, though not hard enough to hurt. Andrew doesn’t even give him the satisfaction of a reaction. He also makes Neil wipe soggy cat food off of Kevin’s hand and chin.

By the time Kevin is fifteen and argumentative, Neil will look back and realise Andrew has him dead to rights anyway. 


End file.
